Like many of you, we visited our fair share of conferences over the fall of 2023, both speaking and exhibiting. Those included Workday Rising in North America as well as in Europe, Gartner Reimagine HR, the annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition (analyst George Larocque had a great wrap-up of that one), and many smaller events for governments, community groups, and corporations.
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Some of what we’ve observed:
Moving from jobs to skills is on your mind. At past events, as recently as a year ago, we spent considerable time describing what it meant to move from a jobs-based mindset to a skills-based mindset. Now, we’re finding that people are stopping by our booth already thinking about this transition. When we told people that our technology helps companies make the jobs-to-skills transition, they asked “how?” and said “tell me more,” as opposed to “what’s that?”
Global interest in skills intelligence has accelerated. We always get visitors from multiple continents, but the percentage of overseas people this time around, particularly from Japan, was higher than ever.
Workforce-management continues to be not just a “field” but a community. For some people, this was their first time at a large, national human-resources community event since 2019. So people reunited with peers who understood the challenges that they’ve had over the last several years, including managing the rapid move to remote work, dealing with mental-health crises in workforces, whiplashing through dramatic boom-and-bust hiring and layoff cycles, diversity issues, and more. There was more hugging, more bonding, more “can’t-believe-how-long-it’s-beens” particularly at the HR Technology Conference, than ever.
A lot of talk. We patented the only technology in the world that can harmonize skills and jobs between two separate systems, as well as from the labor market. That doesn’t stop others from claiming they do this too. One person stopped by our booth and told us they’d heard another vendor make this claim — harmonizing multiple systems — for which we offered a two-word response, “Show me.” Ask companies to show you what they do and which customer they do this for. They won’t be able to, but that won’t keep them from saying it.
The Fall 2023 conference season is mostly over, but we're gearing up for 2024. Keep your eyes on the events section of SkyHive.ai to see where we'll be in the months to come. In the meantime, learn more about us by viewing our “Meet SkyHive” video, other resources, or by signing up for a demo.
